1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to magnetic disk drives, and more particularly, to self servowriting of tracks on a rotating magnetic disk medium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The writing of servotrack information on a magnetic disk medium is a critical process in the manufacture of a disk drive. Conventionally, servotrack information is written with a specialized servowriting instrument mounted on a large granite block to minimize external vibration effects. Increasing track densities and decreasing disk-drive size has led to the investigation of self servowriting techniques. One issue confronting the use of self servowriting is track-to-track or radial error propagation and amplification of written-in errors and imperfections with respect to a perfectly circular track.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,447 to Yarmchuk et al. describes reduction of radial error propagation by generating a correction signal using a filter applied to a position error signal (PES) to reduce a closed-loop response of a track-following servo loop to less than unity at frequencies equal to integer multiples of the disk rotation frequency. While permitting implementation of self servowriting with reduced radial error propagation, the PES filtering technique of the Yarmchuk patent fails to readily support increasingly aggressive track densities.
Accordingly, there exists a need for technique for aggressively reducing written-in error propagation during self servowriting. The present invention satisfies these needs.